Biden met with a makeup artist while traveling and before Zoom calls, according to the new report
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Former president Joe Biden regularly used makeup to hide his age, and Kamala Harris’s team had a strategy in place in case he passed while in office, according to a new book written by two political journalists.
The revelations come from an excerpt of the upcoming book Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House, written by *The Hill’*s Amie Parnes and NBC News’s Jonathan Allen.
Biden regularly met with a makeup artist while traveling and before Zoom calls with aides to cover up signs of aging, according to the excerpts reviewed by The Hill. Biden consistently made these appointments, but sometimes canceled the briefings that were meant to follow.
Harris’s aides also had contingency plans in place in case Biden died in office, Parnes and Allen wrote. This included a spreadsheet of Republican judges whom Donald Trump didn’t appoint. That way, if Harris needed to be sworn in on short notice, it could be done by a judge who isn’t in Trump’s camp but who Republicans would still see as credible.
Harris wasn’t aware of this spreadsheet, according to the excerpts reviewed by The Hill. However, the aide who put it together left in January 2023 and instructed his colleagues to contact him immediately if Biden passed because he had a strategy prepared.
Joe Biden used makeup to hide his age while in office, a new book reveals, while Kamala Harris's aide had a strategy ready in case the then-president diedopen image in gallery
Joe Biden used makeup to hide his age while in office, a new book reveals, while Kamala Harris's aide had a strategy ready in case the then-president died (POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
“It shows what we had to do to prepare with the unique circumstances we had, which was an eighty-plus-year-old president who was running,” one Democratic official told Parnes and Allen, according to The Hill.
The Independent has contacted Biden and Harris’ offices for comment.
Concerns about Biden’s age — he was 82 when he left office — ramped up as his re-election campaign got off the ground in 2023. Worries about his ability to serve peaked after his disastrous debate performance against Trump in June 2024.
Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic candidate after concerns about his age came to a headopen image in gallery
Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic candidate after concerns about his age came to a head (AFP via Getty Images)
Following the debate, Democrats called on Biden to step down and pass the baton to a younger candidate. Less than a month later, Biden bowed out of the race and endorsed Harris.
Harris would go on to lose the presidency to Trump, earning just 226 electoral votes to his 312.
“Publicly, Democrats scoffed at Republican claims that Biden wasn’t up to the job,” Parnes and Allen wrote. “But privately, some of them worried all along that they were putting too much stock in an old man who, at best, had long since lost his fastball.”